Building a Virtual Team

Would it shock you to know that you have a virtual team? This may seem like a ridiculous question, but after learning a bit about the evolving nature of today’s workplace, more and more managers are answering, “Yes!”

It helps to understand just what makes a team virtual in the first place, starting with some of the following characteristics:

Do colleagues work more than 90 feet away from one another?

Does your team rely on communication technologies to accomplish specific goals?

Do you have frequent web or tele-conferences?

Does one or more colleague work remotely, with limited or even zero face time with the rest of the team?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then there is no doubt about it: you have a virtual team. This is important, because a virtual team is not the same as a face-to-face team.

Our image of a virtual team usually involves a small group of people dispersed across hundreds and hundreds of miles. While this is definitely one form of virtual team, it’s not the only model. What distinguishes a virtual team from a face-to-face one is how they communicate, which is usually a function of distance – 50 feet or more. That distance (or even located in the same office but on distance floor) acts as a psychological barrier for many people, causing them to avoid walking to a team member’s desk and rely on technology instead.

Thanks to a study by Tom Allen, we have an exact number for when that shift happens. Allen studied a team of engineers and found that if they worked in the next office over, they had a 25% chance of communicating once a week. If they were 30 feet apart or more, they had a 10% chance of communicating at least once a week. But, if they were more than 50 feet apart, the frequency of their communication dropped. Past 90 feet, it didn’t matter whether they were in the next building, or in China, they began to act like a virtual team.

Virtual teams are much more common than we think, existing in offices across the country and presenting a new set of problems that can’t be solved with face-to-face solutions. It is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole: a waste of time, money and resources.

If it seems that telecommuting, or virtual work, is more popular than ever, it’s not hard to see why: a new report from Global Workplace Analytics (GWA) and FlexJobs shows that it has grown by 115% in the past decade.

And it shows no signs of slowing. In fact, GWA also reports that 50% of the US workforce holds a job compatible with at least partial teleworking, and that 80 to 90% of the workforce would like to work remotely at least part-time.

Part of the reason stems from the fact that 80% of married millennials have a dual-income household that leaves little time for recreation – so any time gained by working from home is attractive. In fact, as millennials make up more of the workforce, employers are using flex work to attract top talent that might balk at the idea of having to go to an office every day of the week.

As more companies embrace virtual work, however, they discover that many of the benefits outlined by GWA fail to materialize, and that their teams exhibit a number of negative characteristics outlined in a Forbes report:

GWA Benefits of Virtual Teams

Employers can save $11,000 per half-time telecommuter per year

Half-time telecommuters gain 11 days back per year – time they would have spent commuting

Absenteeism decrease of 31% with half-time telecommuting

Increase in productivity and morale

Increase in loyalty to employer

Organizational agility

Improved work-life balance

Forbes Challenges of Virtual Teams

Feelings of isolation

Lack of social interaction

Low levels of trust

Miscommunication and cultural clashes

Loss of team spirit

As GWA notes, it is only “well-executed programs” that can help employers achieve the desired benefits.

The question for today’s employers is this: Are you ready to transition from a face-to-face model to a virtual one? To help answer that question, consider the following:

Working virtually means more than taking a laptop home – it requires a culture change that embraces digital workflow and communications tools that maximize productivity and teamwork across distances.

Well-executed virtual teams take the time to learn communications strategies and techniques that build trust and camaraderie without ever being in the same room.

In short, simply offering flex work may get the employees you want in the door, but without investing in the skills and processes that make virtual teams perform, those same employees may not deliver the results you expect or stick around for long.

A great way to set your virtual teams up for success start is with an assessment from Virtual Team Builders. Your business can thrive in a virtual, telecommuting world – and we can help.

About 40% of Microsoft’s 400,000 employees worldwide did not have a traditional office in 2007, the last year the company released this data. Recently, the tech giant announced that it was ending the benefit for many of those workers, aiming to transition them back to a traditional office environment.

“In many fields, such as software development and digital marketing, the nature of work is changing, which requires new ways of working,” said a statement from the company. “We are bringing small, self-directed agile teams in these fields together.”

I respectfully disagree – the nature of work is indeed changing, but very much in the opposite direction. A 2016 survey shows that more than half of corporate teams hail from multiple nations, up from just 41% in 2014 and 33% in 2012. In fact, up to 41% of corporate teams never meet in person.

So what drove Microsoft’s decision?

Failure to understand virtual work

According to the Gartner Group, 50% of virtual teams fail because they do not understand how to work virtually. Simply put, when interpersonal communication occurs mostly or entirely via electronic means, the skills and strategies we use to work productively and cohesively need to evolve. All too often, they don’t.

When companies say they dislike virtual teams because “the nature of work is changing,” to me it says they never quite cracked the code of doing so effectively in the workplace. Rather than solve the problem, they disrupt their workers’ lives and routines by embarking on expensive and complicated reorganizations.

I hope they make sure that in the new arrangement, team members sit no more than 90 feet away from one another. Any further, and they begin to exhibit the tendencies and behaviors of virtual teams anyway.

The way forward

Simply put, there is no reason – not one – why virtual teams cannot work as effectively and productively as co-located teams. Towards that end, Virtual Team Builders is pleased to launch a new resource for companies and teams that may be struggling, or even contemplating a drastic move such as Microsoft has.

Our Lightning Pro webinars are short, targeted, and laser-focused to address one commonly experienced challenge at a time. Affordable and convenient, each 45-minute webinar delivers instantly applicable skills and knowledge that your team can put into practice immediately. Current webinars are:

Tips, Tricks and Troubleshooting for Skype for Business

Advanced Skype for Business

SharePoint for Virtual Teams

Jumpstart Your Online Training

Virtual teams became common for a reason – they are convenient, flexible and easy to implement, making life more enjoyable for employees and less costly for businesses. Don’t let the challenges of virtual teamwork slow you down. Overcome them and achieve the results you know you can. Sign up for our Lightning Pro webinars to get started today!

Many companies start working virtually almost by accident. They grow larger, and employees begin to work farther apart – even as little as 50 feet between colleagues can change the way they communicate, and the skills they need to do so effectively. This skill gap is even more pronounced when colleagues are separated by entire floors, cities, or continents.

In this case study, we will look at one multinational company’s journey from inefficiency and frustration to productivity and success and it all starts with one word: awareness.

Client Background: Professional Learning Strategist

While developing an online educational platform for a multinational corporation, this Virtual Team Builders client (a professional learning strategist with extensive experience in the development of corporate training programs) recognized a pattern: colleagues who worked virtually had a consistent, pervading sense that they simply weren’t working effectively.

“They had started working virtually, but never really articulated the skills required to do so effectively. They just sort of assumed that people would start doing it, but all they had done was adopt inefficient technologies and implement them in inefficient ways. And nobody really knew.”

The Challenge: Lack of Virtual Awareness

Virtual meetings, held via Teleconference or Web Conference platforms such as WebEx and Skype For Business were particular struggles, featuring characteristics such as:

miscommunication

inefficiency

poor engagement

lack of participation

The strategist found that the most effective way to demonstrate the necessity of developing virtual teamwork and communication skills was simply to expose her client to them.

“We brought in Virtual Team Builders to assist on this project and you could see the ‘aha’ moment. It’s when people experienced a really good, really effective virtual meeting and improved communication between meetings. For the first time, they began to realize just how effective their team could be with the right skills in place.”

The Solution: Virtual Teamwork, Not Virtual Training

What this client recognized was that training in the virtual environment is quite different from working in it – and yet there are far more resources on the former than the latter. Communication tools that we take for granted in co-located teams such as face time and body language simply aren’t there in the virtual space, and few people know how to use the resources available to them to drive engagement.

“I’ve seen people who use WebEx but actively disable all but the bare minimum features. You can’t even use your webcam, the white board, annotation tools or use VoIP. All of these wonderful tools to provide face time and encourage participation and engagement, and people are too overwhelmed to explore them.”

Key Virtual Team Takeaway

By taking the time to develop their virtual team skills and knowledge, the learning strategist’s client experienced:

a significant increase in morale

productivity boost

less attrition

increased collaboration

To drive these results, the learning hub developed by the strategist included resources on working virtually, and an opportunity for people to talk about their specific challenges. Virtual Team Builders offered four one-hour sessions to align with the topics in the hub. These courses are now available to the public, and are accredited for Leadership Professional Development Units (PDUs).

Do you have a virtual team? Register for our upcoming courses (accredited for Leadership PDUs) to learn valuable virtual skills, or contact us to inquire about a virtual assessment of your team and it’s unique needs.

As another year comes to the fore, we are once again in that funny place that is both encouraging yet daunting, as we strive to understand how to best handle this vast, untouched span of 365 days that lay before us.

This New Year can bring greatness if you allow it; no matter the past, we now have the renewed chance of starting afresh, of clearing our mindsets that limit us, and of gaining greater clarity for the upcoming year. This process of starting afresh begins with learning about ourselves and how we work so that we may implement our positive learning experiences in meaningful ways in the New Year.

To ease into 2017, we suggest a short exercise that will hopefully challenge you to a bit of productive and honest introspection. Through Thinking and Re-Thinking, we prompt you to reflect on your past year, to positively acknowledge important insights you have gained thus far and to ultimately contemplate how the things you have learned will meaningfully impact and inform how you approach 2017.

Get a pen and notepad or open up your computer-let’s start!

Think About How You Did This Past Year

Before you move onto planning how you will handle 2017, assess this past year. Our past offers a gold mine of experience and expertise that can structure how we may go about and approach our future decisions. Ask yourself:

1)Did I achieve my goals for 2016?

2)What was one major challenge I and/or my virtual team handled well in 2016?

3)What was one major team challenge that could have been handled in a better way if I were to face it again in the future?

4)How did I measure the effectiveness of my virtual team in 2016?

5)What did I do to build sustaining relationships with my virtual team to boost productivity?

Now think about what you will do differently this year.

Now Re-think About How Your Team Did This Past Year

Closely associated to Thinking is Rethinking, that is, recognizing and doing away with our blind spots. We all possess some form of a blind spot. Similar to driving a car, where our rear-view-mirrors, headrests or even backseat passengers may obscure our vision, the clarity to properly navigate a virtual team may also become obscured when our blind spot clouds our judgement.

Sometimes, these blind spots come in the form of assumptions. Our assumptions are blind spots because they lie beyond what we can identify and correct. These assumptions may be pre-conceived notions about how our virtual team is functioning.

So, before you move onto planning how you will move towards greater success in 2017, begin the

New Year by sitting down with your team and ask them these questions:

What went well for you in 2016?

What do you need more of in 2017?

What do you need less of in 2017?

What can I do to support your growth and development?

So as you move into 2017, spend some time to reflecting on your blind spots and checking in with your virtual team about what they need to succeed.

Do you wonder how technology and the web will impact the future of the workplace? CEOs certainly do, and below is an overview of some of the key issues they report dealing with in the changing business landscape of 2015. Naturally, changes that are important for CEOs are important for managers of Virtual Teams as well. Some of the main issues relating to working in Virtual Teams which CEOs have to address are keeping their business focused on core strengths, effectively reaching online customers, finding new talent, adapting to mobile technology, solving employee commuting and scheduling problems, minimizing distractions, being an effective voice for their companies, and taking on more millenials, with their particular challenges, into the workforce. We will be addressing each of these topics in more detail in future weeks.

Virtual Teamwork Is A Way For The Future, Complete With Pitfalls

For a lot of workers, coming to the office every day may soon become a thing of the past. As business moves to the web, work becomes less reliant on physical presence in the office. But this is a double-edged sword: for every instance in which it facilitates communication with the office and clients, there is a flipside of technology and social media as productivity black holes. (Who has not lost valuable time contemplating images of pets playing piano or other similar Internet offerings?) So managers of Virtual Teams need to ensure that team members stay focused on work. Any efficient framework for virtual teamwork must support proper work habits from its very design.

All employees, both those working in the office and those working remotely, will have to stay in constant communication with the main office. But staying in the loop at the office rarely boils down to just reading the relevant emails. A good Virtual Team environment has to facilitate the dissemination of relevant information to all workers and to ensure that Virtual Team members receive the information they need to do their job at the same time as employees working in the office.

As communication technology makes work in Virtual Teams increasingly practical, the workforce itself shifts towards millennials. These individuals require a democratic, flexible work environment to stay loyal and committed, and they need more information about why they are asked to do to what they are doing. A Virtual Team manager has to answer such questions and take these factors into account to create a functional work environment.

Team leaders are also aware that working in virtual teams will play a key role in the discovery and retention of talented employees as more job opportunities become available in the current period of economic growth, making employee retention more difficult, and in response to chronic overcrowding and mounting commuting issues in large urban/financial centers. A company’s business model impacts the overall time employees have to commit to their job. Virtual teams are a way for companies to accommodate workers’ needs for a flexible work schedule, and most companies are already working virtually to some extent, Additionally, since not all desirable employees will be physically present in the geographic vicinity of a company’s headquarters, Virtual Teams allow employers to increase their area of search for talent.

Opportunity Always Entails Risk

Taking the workforce out of the office environment goes hand in hand with expanding business on a global scale and with diversifying a company’s activity. But diversification always carries the risk of dilution of core strengths (see item #1 of the article above). The recent increased availability of capital and the current economic boom could tempt American CEOs to try to expand their companies dangerously beyond their core business, even as companies’ increased reliance on the web as a marketplace and their diminishing physical presence makes identity a more pressing issue than ever.

While technology supplies the means for efficient communication, its potential productivity and identity drawbacks require that comprehensive strategies be established to ensure that the gains do not outweigh the costs. Virtual Team leaders need to pay close attention to the implementation of these changes, as their business depends on it. Over the next weeks, we will be looking in more detail at specific issues which have shown up on CEOs’ radars in 2015.

Last time, we talked about how your virtual team members can benefit from recognizing their blind spots. Paired with listening to feedback from others who may be able to identify our blind spots is a good strategy to be attuned to your surroundings and yourself.

In this article, we’re going to focus on ways to maintain a good view of what is inherently away from view, especially in a work environment that can be prone to triggering employees to run on auto-pilot and be disengaged from their team.

If you do not notice how you behave toward others, especially with distance wedged between you and your virtual team members, you may fail to recognize how your behavior affects your team. What you cannot recognize, you cannot change. It takes conscious effort to recognize blind spots.

The world is busy and so is your virtual team. It should not come as a surprise that so many individuals today run on auto-pilot, removing themselves from the moment they are physically in.

Are you constantly on auto-pilot?

Stop and think about your day.

At any point, did you get distracted while typing an email to a colleague and still managed to hit send? Perhaps you were reading something on your computer screen while your hands reached to dial the teleconference number for your next meeting.

Take a moment and think about your reasons for being on auto pilot. Do they include:

excessive presence of technology;

an overwhelming list of things to do;

meetings that you feel are a waste of time; or

boredom

Let’s focus on technology.

How technology can hinder your virtual team’s engagement

With technology so mobile and offering so much information in your pocket, it’s easy to get caught up in devices when they offer so much to do on the go. Your virtual team relies on technology and the mobility it offers.

But sometimes, what allows your team to be virtual can be taken for granted at the expense of the team. A trap people can fall into is becoming so absorbed in technology and their devices that they don’t pay attention to their surroundings, let alone themselves.

An example of this trap is when Virtual Team Builder’s founder, Claire, once sat in a lobby across from a young man who was focused on his iPhone. Claire stepped away from her seat, leaving her laptop for no more than a minute. A homeless gentleman, wrapped in a blanket, picked up Claire’s laptop and walked out of the building. The young man on his iPhone never even noticed; his eyes never left his device.

Is there ever a right time for an auto-pilot setting?

Your auto-pilot comes on to assist you in checking off items on your to-do list without having to be completely present while the task is done. Your auto-pilot allows you multi-task. Your auto-pilot helps to just get things done, but at what risk?

Your virtual team needs to move beyond just getting things done – whether it is during your team meetings or your one-on-one’s. After all, the person on the other end of the technology deserves your full attention.

Even without seeing (replace the hands fumbling, they can be doing anything), you can still tell if someone is distracted or disengaged from a conversation.

You need to be aware and recognize that what you’re doing can be felt and sensed by others.

How can you achieve this self-awareness?

Here are steps to follow:

Slow down what you’re doing, thinking and saying.

Observe your own words and actions, and how others respond to you.

Take stock of what you’re doing and why.

Your virtual team’s reactions to you may not always be readily accessible; you can’t see a frown over phone line or crossed arms. If you let yourself do everything mindlessly, including interacting with your colleagues, you can miss the cues that are available to you.

If being so absorbed in technology can cause the young man with the iPhone to miss Claire’s laptop being stolen in a face-to-face environment, realize how many cues you might be missing in your virtual environment unless you attend to what is around you.

Encourage your virtual team to be more engaged and self-aware, so they can check their blind spots and not run on auto-pilot when they are needed to be present.

In the next few articles, we’ll explore how an overwhelming list of things to do, boredom and virtual meetings can cause your virtual team to run on auto-pilot and lead to disengagement.

Your virtual team can move beyond an auto-pilot setting and make a habit of engaging with themselves and with each other through genuine presence, fostered through self-awareness. Virtual Team Builders can help you get there.

Whenever you’ve tried to pursue something – a fruitful job interview, a presentation well done, or a healthy relationship with your virtual team – you may have heard the age-old advice: “just be yourself”. Even we have said it. To be yourself, you have to recognize and acknowledge everything about yourself – even the bad stuff. You must know yourself wholly.

What does it mean to know your whole self?

A person who is whole recognizes every piece of himself or herself. This may sound easy until you realize how much you repress just to get through a day.

We have talked about the shadow self before and how engaging with our shadow selves helps us gain greater self-awareness and heightens our empathy for others.

Imagine yourself driving a car; the space behind the passenger seat just outside your door that isn’t visible to your side mirror is your blind spot. Your blind spot is similar to the shadow self: it is not visible until you make the conscious effort to turn your head and see what is or isn’t there. Failing to see or acknowledge your blind spot is dangerous and can cause accidents.

Not acknowledging a car in your blind spot and risking a car crash is similar to not acknowledging the qualities in yourself you may not like and risking another sort of crash – a breakdown of a relationship with a virtual team member, for example.

How can your blind spot affect your virtual team so much?

In a face-to-face environment, body language is present along with verbal correspondence to communicate with your team. You get immediate reactions from others and you can respond instantaneously.

In a virtual team, it can be more challenging to know your virtual team mates’ reactions to you. Behind a computer screen or on the other end of a telephone line, it can be easier for a slighted team member to hide or disguise his or her disengagement, annoyance, or anger.

In a virtual workplace, without the aid of indicators like a half-smile or crossed arms, your knowledge of yourself can help you navigate through your virtual team and help strengthen your relationships rather than hurt them.

How does not knowing yourself impact your relationship with others?

Ignoring problems don’t make them go away; in many instances, dismissing real problems makes them worse. Improvement can start only if you recognize what needs improvement.

If you have a quality that causes strain in your relationships, you must identify this problematic quality and take ownership of it. Taking ownership means that you can take control of it; you can work through it, you can change it, you can stop it.

Seeing what is in your blind spot is empowering! It lets you know if and when you can change lanes to get to where you want to be.

What conscious efforts do you make to ensure you have a good handle on your blind spots?

Often, the management skills that will make you a great leader in virtual teams are the same life skills that will help you navigate life in general. Today, we’re going to talk about a concept that might help you navigate your personal development inside and outside of your virtual team.

We don’t always get along with our friends, family, and colleagues: it’s a fact of life but because of the importance of social interaction in virtual teams, virtual team leaders need a set of strategies for dealing with conflict and negative emotions before they get out of hand.

Think about the last time you found yourself annoyed by a member of your team: maybe a colleague has been giving you a hard time, maybe they have a quirk that irritates you, maybe they stress you out.

But consider this: the behavior that other people exhibit that you find annoying are also present in you. In fact, the reason that you find them so annoying is because you’ve spent so much time working to suppress those qualities in you.

What is the “Shadow Self”?

This concept, known as the “Shadow Self” was first articulated in the West by psychologist Carl Jung.

To simplify, Jung believed that there were two elements to human beings:

the persona that we try to display to society; and

the shadow that we repress in order to fit in.

When we get annoyed at other people’s behavior, we are in fact reacting to our own supressed behavior that we don’t like.

The problem here is that supressing our feelings is seldom helpful. In fact, it can lead to damaging effects on your mind and body, and our relationships with others.

How can the “Shadow Self” help improve our work performance?

Instead of dealing with anger and annoyance by repressing our feelings, or lashing out at others, we can use our feelings to make ourselves more whole, genuine, and present..

Let’s give an example for how this might work:

Let’s imagine that you have a colleague who interrupts other people during virtual meetings. It drives you up the wall. Instead of suppressing your feelings, or lashing out at them, you can ask yourself: is this behavior something that exists within me?

When we search our annoyances for things we dislike about ourselves, we engage our shadow selves. By engaging our shadow selves, we gain greater awareness of who we are, and greater awareness that other people are not so different from us. That awareness will allow us to react with compassion instead of frustration.

The solution isn’t to push or change aspects of our shadow selves away from our behavior, but to acknowledge and embrace their presence.

The next time you find yourself annoyed at a team member, search your memories, your feelings, and your own self-knowledge. Are you annoyed because of something that you have been suppressing? Acknowledge your feelings of annoyance, but then move past them to realize your similarity to your team, and your own true self.

In our last blog post, we talked about authenticity: far from being a feel-good fad, authenticity has been found to be incredibly important to leaders, and especially to leaders of virtual teams.

Suffice it to say that authenticity breeds trust, and trust is the driving force for engagement, productivity, and results in virtual teams. Authenticity is also surprisingly hard to achieve. To be authentic is a process of learning to be self-aware.

We believe that authenticity is a major facet of the human side of virtual teams. Authenticity refers to being true to who we are.

How often in our daily lives do we exhibit our genuine selves by being honest with ourselves and others about what we feel and desire?

How often do we pursue the things in life that truly make us happy?

Our authentic selves must be expressed through our actions; in other words, we must live genuinely. Living genuinely allows us to be fully present in our jobs, families, and every activity in which we are engaged in, including our virtual teams.

We can’t be fully aware of our authentic selves without being fully present. So let’s take a moment to reflect on our level of self awareness.

Evaluating your level of self-awareness

We have a series of things to consider to guide you through this process.

Do you respond with awareness in my virtual meetings? At your next virtual meeting, become the observer and notice how you respond to your colleagues or team members.

When someone offers a dissenting opinion, do you take a moment to reflect and respond in a way that values others’ viewpoints?

Do you listen for the intent of what is being said, not just the words that our colleagues use? Do you multitask during your meetings?

Do you listen for the tone of voice, the pace of their words, and notice whether your colleagues or team members are stressed?

Do you judge what someone is saying or do you seek to understand?

What else do you notice about yourself in and out of virtual meetings?

What do you notice about your team members?

Do you notice that they’re present or multi-tasking on mute?

Do you notice your team members respond quickly to opinions or questions without reflecting?

How to use self-awareness as a leader

If you are the leader, consider how you can influence your team in a positive way. One way of encouraging your virtual team to be present, be more aware, and be more authentic is to open the dialogue to them about what presence looks like in your team.

At the beginning of a meeting, have a conversation with your virtual team about what being present looks like; engage your entire team in the conversation.

Self-awareness leads to presence

The more you are aware of your behaviour, the more authentic and present you can be, and the stronger of a leader you can grow.

In our next blog we’ll continue developing our self-evaluation from an outside source: we’re going to ask how your team members perceive you.

DID YOU KNOW?

ABOUT US

Virtual Team Builders is a training and consulting company that caters to corporations and teams who depend on effective virtual collaboration to succeed. Our training is targeted towards the unique challenges faced by teams operating in a virtual environment; challenges that are present whether members work 90 feet apart or 3000 miles apart.